My birthday will forevermore coincide with our ‘famiversary,’ as the days of passing court and bringing kids home from Ethiopia are intertwined so closely on the calendar. We just celebrated my 4oth birthday as well as our second year as a family. My husband surprised me with a trip to Western Pleasure Guest Ranch, an amazing place right in our own backyard! Many friends joined us for dinner and a fantastic evening gathering around the firepit, some stayed overnight, and some joined us on a beautiful trail ride on Memorial Day. Between the great outdoors, the horses, the friends and the dogs, my kids were in heaven (and so was I). Just a crew of little rascals running around with their friends, stopping into our cabin once in a while for a snack. It was such a relaxing time…does anyone else find that getting away from home is imperative to relaxing. Amazing feeling walking away from the laundry pile and the to-do list, even for a couple of days. Anyways, thank you so much sweetie…I couldn’t have asked for a more appropriate way to celebrate these milestones! Here are some shots from the trip. Ya’ll, go visit this ranch!

Now, I wish you could hear the thunder of hooves that goes with these next two photos. This is the view from our cabin overlooking the meadow, in the morning as they are bringing in horses that have been out to pasture overnight. They were breathtaking running up the meadow towards the ranch!

This guy is waiting for the herd to arrive…

We went on a great trail ride, with amazing scenery around the Grouse Creek area. I loved every minute of it! But I don’t have many photos, so let’s skip to the part where the kids got to ride in the arena afterwards. So proud of their boots, and unable to hide their enthusiasm about riding. It was so much fun to watch them!

So grateful for my husband, my kids, my friends, and for this beautiful place we live. Amen.

I LOVE Easter. Primarily because the whole hope of the Christian faith rests on the event of this day: That we worship a risen Lord. That God came to walk among us in the person of Christ, lived and was tempted and tried and betrayed and tortured and everything else, and then conquered death. I loved this essay about Christ’s resurrection that was published on Huffington Post for Easter this year.

I love these kids! Ok wait, then we had an Easter egg hunt. Coloring Easter eggs is almost as much fun as hiding them. Just saying. And how about the miracle of finding an Easter egg? As evidenced by this look of utter amazement:

(Sorry about the tacky shoe choice…Ellie paired her tennies with this Easter dress. The better for speed while hunting eggs.)

Check out this one…he walked past it twice:

Here is the reveal on the last egg, a small green one exactly the color of the emerging Daylillies in which it was hidden. Kids didn’t have a chance!

We had such a fun time with our friends. So much so that after dinner we started a fire in the fire pit outside and stayed up late hanging out and talking while the kids put on plays for our entertainment using various props from the garage. A very happy start to Spring!

These two moose, a mama and her youngster, are in my 94-year-old neighbor’s yard across the street. It’s spring time in Sandpoint, and these two have been hanging around the neighborhood for the past couple of weeks. They are lovely! Looking a bit mangey as they get ready to shed their winter coat, but otherwise healthy. And peaceful. They just meander, eat peoples shrubs, stand there and look at the dogs that bark at them and the cars that pull over to photograph them. And me as I walk outside to take out the garbage. It’s so cool! Not that they are to be trifled with. A friend here posted a video she shot in front of her house of two moose fighting. They rear up and kick their front legs at each other, much like an iconic girl fight, except that they are enormous and can kill a person or dog by striking them with those long front legs. I took this photo from behind the wall of my front porch, with a telephoto lens. ’cause I’m smart like that.

Almost two years home and really enjoying the rhythm of the family. Significant events of the past three months include moving our oldest son to the local Waldorf school (where he joins his little brother), and potty training our youngest. Both boys are working through their paces in Taekwondo, taking an occasional swimming lesson, going to birthday parties and play dates, improving at math, reading and all sorts of things. More importantly than any of that, is how they are getting to know themselves and be more at ease. We still have many challenges, but they are different, and more constructive than they were 18 months ago. The truth is, the really interesting stuff that I could write about, is too personal to my kids to be publicly shared. As they get older, our adoption story becomes in many ways more theirs than mine to tell. So it becomes complicated to decide what is and is not ok to write about. I’m working on that. All the kids’ language skills continue to improve, which means when emotional issues come up, they have a much broader means of communicating. This is huge for them, and also much easier for us parents to understand and be able to meet their needs. Yes, we still have fits of rage, but they are quite rare. And the kids are able to recover from them and express their feelings. Which, I know, is actually better than not having a rage in the first place. They have a lot of feelings to deal with, and sometimes just need to get them out. They are doing a beautiful, amazing job of it, and I’m so proud of them!

A revelation of the older boys patiently enduring our little one’s potty training has been their acknowledgement that things didn’t exactly go this way for them, when they were learning the same skill. Both remember being punished, sometimes severely, for accidents. Both feel that they got none of the patience and gentleness that Ellie has enjoyed (confession: I wouldn’t always call my attitude during potty training ‘patient!’). They didn’t get rewarded for doing it right. Their experience, according to their memories, was all stick and no carrot. And the stick part was really a stick, or a switch cut from a tree branch. The amazing, breakthrough thing is that they’ve been able to verbalize their frustrations. “I’m jealous that I didn’t get to be a baby here.” Things like that. We’ve included them in the rewards many times…like we had a rule in the beginning, if Ellie poops on the potty, EVERYONE gets candy! This increased Ellie’s group pressure, and let the boys share in her successes. But still, they’ve been feeling sad and a little angry, and a bit resentful towards their sister. So we’ve been talking that out, acknowledging feelings about it, processing, and moving forward. I wonder if they will always harbor that kind of resentment a little. Like siblings who, as adults, still see the baby of the family as the one who got all the breaks. In our case, Ellie won’t have any memory of her time before America, either good or bad. But I’m sure the boys will tell her, everything was easy for her. I also am keenly aware of their loss, because being Ethiopian is an amazing, beautiful thing. And although my sons’ experience early in life wasn’t great, they still lost the great parts of their cultural heritage when we took them away. They may grieve it for a long time, and we will be here to hold them, support them, help them search for answers when they need that.

Last weekend we built a little model of a ‘Sidama village,’ the boys and I.

I had seen a similar project on some other adoptive Mom’s facebook post. So I shared the plan for creating our little structures, and then we went on a nature walk to gather materials. We spent a good part of the weekend putting it together. And in the productive time of sitting side-by-side, hands busy glueing things, my oldest son’s memories were triggered. Like what the doors looked like on his home and some of the others in his village. There were two versions, and I encouraged him to make both. Some had low wooden barriers at the bottom that, during the day, served to keep the chickens, and maybe other things like Snakes, out of the house. But each time a person went in or out, one had to step over this board. That memory was very clear to him. Others just had a door that swung upwards during the day and was propped up. We took the not-quite-finished model to school on Monday where Alex could share it with his friends, and continue to search for materials on their nature walks to complete the model. His friends were so affirming to him, they all loved the model and wanted to know more. In his Parent-Teacher conference this week, his teacher told me that he shared a lot about his village when he showed his classmates.

We recently celebrated Eliana’s third birthday.

You know that song “Thank Heaven for Little Girls?” That’s how I felt on her birthday. The things she and her friends love, like tutus and pompoms and tea parties. They are just the sweetest! Guiding the development of small humans is amazing. It’s crazy that our femininity or masculinity is part of who we are from such an early age.

The week after Ellie’s party, she and I got to go to a princess tea party for her friends’ 4th birthday. Here’s Ellie in her tea party hat we made together!

Is she not the funniest person? All coked up on sugar and femininity. My friend, who threw this party, really should be an event planner. The details were outstanding. Notice I only showed one photo of Ellie’s birthday party…there were no details to speak of. Maybe every year I’ll just post photos of Ellie’s friends’ birthday since they are so close together.

At any rate, I am loving the girl stuff, and looking forward to things like dance classes in the coming years. I’m so glad that among our crew we got a girl.

The boys are at spring break ski camp this week. All day lessons every day, and the weather is beautiful and warm! I love that we live so close to ski resort and can take advantage of such opportunities. Just like that, my little boys are skiing black diamond runs. Awesome!

Happy Spring everyone. Sorry for the randomly strung together thoughts here, but that’s reflective of life right now!

Today has been a day that included the full spectrum of parenting: Snuggles, “I missed you Mommy”‘s after school with hugs, laughter, breakfast-making, lunch-making, dinner-making, school meetings, big decisions, reading time, potty training, homework help…AND…”I hate you. I wish you weren’t my parents. You are mean.” refusal of eye contact, banging on things, tears, defiance, rage, hyperventilating. And a fairly rapid return to calm and peace. Trying to celebrate the fact that the kid who was raging put words to his feelings. That’s a step in the right direction. and that he didn’t have a complete meltdown. In my weakness, however, I find it hard to celebrate the “I hate you”‘s and the “I wish you weren’t my parents.” I always take a moment to remind him that neither of us has a choice in that…that I’m his mom and that’s that, and while he can walk away when he’s 18, up until that point he lives in my house and follows my rules (including the one that says banging and trying to break cabinets is not allowed.) I started to try to point out that if I hated him I would never challenge him to practice his reading homework, because I wouldn’t care if he learned or not. Then I reminded myself how useless it is to communicate with a raging child, and decided to let it go.

I’m tired. And ready to start again tomorrow!

Here’s a video I took of Eliana on Friday night. I have watched it several times, partly to try to figure out exactly what words she was putting to the tune of The First Noel. She was all wound up and having the best time with her friend. Watch for the moment toward the end when her dear little friend holds up a hand and says “Stop!” Doesn’t every girl need a friend like that? Someone who’s willing to be a supportive sidekick while you parade around, full of yourself, and then to be honest with you when you start to get annoying? I hope they stay close and we get to watch this itty bitty bff relationship develop. Ellie’s just finally at the age where she is enjoying scampering off to play with a friend. It’s awesome!

And now it’s time for an episode of Downton Abbey on the Kindle and a good night’s sleep.

Just last week I read a desperate message from a new mom, three months into the adoption of a 9-year old kid. She was at a low point, and described the horrors she was living with as this child worked through his desperation, frustration, and brokenness in what is possibly the most safe environment he’s ever been in, his new family. The rejection, the harmful behaviors, the manipulation, the gross things, the loud things, the most shocking things kids can think of to do, to try to rattle the new cage and see what it’s made of. My heart broke for this mom. I don’t know what will happen with this family, but what I thought about was how deep down, somewhere deep that may never show itself, this kids is so GRATEFUL for her consistency, for her reliability, for the safety she represents. Afraid to trust it, so afraid, but so thankful for the glimmer of hope that it might possibly be real.

In Coming to Grips with Attachment, by Katharine Leslie, the author talks about three months being the safety and security period. This is where the child finds out whether they are in a safe place. It happens with newborn infants, and it happens with “newborn” adopted children (meaning children of any age who newly enter a family). Kids who have been through trauma are pretty aggressive about testing the validity of that safety. Ask any adoptive parent and you might just be amazed by what lengths their kids went to in their testing process! Ms. Leslie goes on to say that the next year is the ‘falling in love’ period, where real love develops among the family members. That can only happen when everyone feels safe and comfortable in their roles, so the drama of the first three months (or however long it takes) is sort of inevitable. I know in our family we saw a significant behavior change begin to take place around the three month mark. And thank God, because I wasn’t sure how much more I could handle. I felt that same sentiment in this poor momma’s words on the screen, more so, as the things she’s dealing with now are more extreme than what I endured with my three. I didn’t feel I had advice to offer, but told her about the above-mentioned book, and told her I’d be praying for her, specifically that she’d start to see that shift happen. There is such huge potential for relationship with a newly adopted child, but boy does it take time and testing. I so hope that she finds a fulfilling mother-child relationship with a healing version of her child sometime very soon.

So I was thinking about this as the year turned, our second holiday season together. As we returned from a wonderful Christmas week traveling with our three kids to visit their grandparents and cousins. I am so proud of my kids! They are a pleasure to travel with, they are fun to share the world with, they are neat people to hang out with. They have worked hard to get to this place, where they are comfortable enough to relax and enjoy themselves. We have all worked hard at it, and the hard work is paying off. And I’m so grateful for my family!

We took an epic bike ride across the Golden Gate Bridge on our trip to San Francisco. That was CRAZY…crowded, overstimulating, far too close to a lot of car traffic and even more foot traffic, but so cool!

We were missing a couple of our group, but here’s the crew who went! Grammy and Poppy were such troopers! As was Melkam, the youngest rider on two wheels, and Ellie, not pictured, who did it in a bike trailer where she slept through most of the adventure.

Our boys played beautifully with their cousins and watched way too many movies, which they loved. Grammy was great to stay with Ellie when she napped so the rest of us could get out and experience San Francisco, which means enjoying a lot of Asian noodles. We rode cable cars, visited parks, did a little shopping for the right fit of jeans for one of our boys. We visited Grace Cathedral for their Christmas Eve service, and the life-sized gingerbread house in the lobby of the Fairmont hotel. Grammy and Poppy surprised us with a wonderful gift, tickets to see The Lion King, our kids’ first experience with live theater. It was spectacular! The costumes, the music, the sets. so cool. I just felt grateful for the whole trip.

With the cousins, all dressed up for a party

Sunrise over the city from our window at Grammy’s house!

And then we came home and still had a week to enjoy together. Now a year ago, I probably still would have dreaded that (what am I going to DO with the kids for five extra days??). This time, I really had fun with them. Genuinely. I know, I surprise even myself!

We went on a snowy hike one morning with some friends and I marveled at how far this boy has come.

This one was ‘hypervigilant’ when he came home…his brain was spending a lot of time worrying about safety, trying to make sure there were no surprises, and watching out for everyone and everything around him. When we went on walks or hikes, the rest of the kids would run ahead and play, and he’d hang back near the adults, feeling more a part of our group than theirs. It was sad, and a complicated problem…encouraging him to go play wasn’t helpful. He’d just worry that he was doing something wrong, or that the adults were making other plans that we didn’t want him to hear. That hypervigilant brain on overdrive. As we walked last week, with some boys who have become good friends, I was overjoyed to see him run ahead, a big smile on his face, and to adventure with the rest of the group. I mean, look at that face! Open, happy, relaxed. I love it. He was laughing out loud, climbing up things, getting too close to the icy water’s edge. Being a little boy! Really, really warmed my heart and made me so proud of him! And also proud of the work we’ve done as a family, because it’s the boring, daily stuff that creates a sense of security. The boring daily stuff every day for a year and a half. That’s what it took for this kid to spend half of a walk letting go and letting himself be free. He did hang back during the second half, began caring for the toddlers and acting like an adult. And that’s fine, that’s part of who he is (and a part I love, this caring, sensitive leader), but it really made my heart leap to see him allow himself a little abandoned joy. I hope there’s more and more of this in the future.

boys on a log

My toddler is another story right now. She spent almost this entire walk in a backpack on my back screaming in my ear. It was rather hard to enjoy, I must say. Didn’t want down, didn’t want up, didn’t want snacks, etc. When we got home and finally got her calmed down I asked her why she cried through the whole walk. She said, “I didn’t like the walk.” Got it. That’s what I thought. It’s the phase she’s in. But darned if she isn’t cute as a button!

“Only a couple of weeks after his 12th birthday, Noah is dying of cancer.”

Noah is my dog. My beloved companion, beautiful Vizsla, our first child (and only child for ten years of our marriage), running partner, fellow adventurer, faithful protector. Perhaps most importantly, he has helped teach my kids about love over the last year and a half. We nearly put him to sleep on Saturday. It was an absolutely wretched weekend.

The short story is that after several tests to determine the cause of a strange variety of symptoms over the past couple of weeks, a chest Xray on Friday revealed what the vet described as a classic picture of metastatic cancer in his lungs. We were devastated. We picked him up that night and he was terribly, terribly sick. He hadn’t eaten during the 24 hours he’d been on IV fluids. I was encouraged when I got him to eat scrambled eggs at home that night. Saturday morning I had trouble waking Noah from a deep sleep. I thought he was dead or in a coma. I’m not kidding, he was that out of it. But he did wake up after a minute, and slowly that day he started to get a little better. Eating and drinking at various intervals, sleeping a lot. But we were going through the process of saying goodbye. My husband and I were a wreck, crying at the drop of a hat, neglecting our kids’ requests to play games or have friends over, resenting their neediness. The news was so sudden and such a shock to me that I couldn’t quite get there…making that terrible decision. I just wanted another day.

2010, hanging out on the boat with my two favorite boys in the world at the time: My husband and my dog. We all loved that boat and being on the lake.

So we waited a day. We had some family photos taken of us on the porch with Noah in them (with enough makeup to cover my swollen eyes). We created a concrete garden stone from a kit and pressed his paws into it to memorialize him. We tried to find ways to say goodbye.

By the end of the day on Sunday he had improved quite a bit. But it was Monday morning when we saw a drastic difference. He was alert, interactive, wagging his tail and wanting to snuggle, back at his post beside the high chair, waiting not-so-patiently for Eliana to drop something. He was finally hungry, really hungry! We were perplexed, relieved. I took him in that the afternoon to have the catheter removed from his leg…the one they left in in case we brought him back for the deadly injection. We got a prescription for prednisone, which should help with pain and inflammation for the time being, and which they tell me may actually have an impact on the cancer itself.

Maybe we’ve bought ourselves a few weeks with him, maybe longer, it’s impossible to say. What I do know is that we did some serious grief processing over the weekend and it wasn’t pretty! So now I have a dog with cancer. For now he seems like he may have a few more happy days in our family, and we’ll take them.

But it does prompt me to write a post to remember him by (Perhaps more for me than for the listening audience). My sister did this once, the year before her dog had to be put down, and I always intended to do the same, to capture memories of a beloved pet. So here it is:

CH Bitteroot’s Bellwether Captain Noah

My husband and I got Noah about a year after we got married. I won the argument over which breed…I was not going to be cleaning up Bernese Mt. Dog hair in the apartment, and we didn’t have enough room for a dog that size. I knew I was going to win that argument…I had planned on getting a Vizsla since meeting my first V puppy while still in college. I was very determined.

This is not Noah, but this is what a newborn Vizsla looks like. I didn’t get the chance to meet him at that age!

Noah was 12 weeks old when we had him flown to SFO from Spokane airport. I picked him up out of the travel crate and he wrapped his paws around my neck and snuggled in for a very intense hug. He rode home curled up on my lap. I was smitten!

Our life in San Francisco was a sweet one for Noah. He got to come to work with us most days. He played every day at a local dog park or went on long walks or runs with me through the beautiful Presidio Eucalyptus woods. On the weekends we often went on ‘Vizsla walks,’ meeting fellow Vizsla owners in the area for hikes through some of the amazing national park system and beaches in Northern California. It was not unusual for there to be a pack of twelve or more Vs; they are very social pack-oriented dogs and they loved running together at full tilt. It was a beautiful experience. He was an integral part of our daily exercise and the reason we explored so much of the Bay Area’s incredible park system and beaches.

Noah’s protective instincts showed themselves at an early age. When he was five months old we were leaving our office in Emmeryville one evening (this was well before Emmeryville was a nice place to live or work). A suspicious-looking character approached us in the parking lot and Noah put himself between me and the stranger and growled at him. The first time we ever heard him growl. It was pretty cute…he was far from scary at that age.

After a couple of years, Noah moved with us to Washington DC. He and I both hated that move at first. It was August, and unbearably hot. We moved for Charles’s job, and I was job searching for three months after we arrived. Noah and I spent a lot of time together during that three months, trying to get our bearings and find relief from the heat. We began to discover Washington’s impressive park system and made some new friends, first through the Vizsla community.

Noah on the left, sweet friend Emma on the right.

Before long we moved to a house in Northern Washington DC, just a block or so from one of the entrances to Rock Creek Park. I ran or walked with Noah on the trails almost every day. And even though I was warned not to go in there alone or I’d end up like Chandra Levy, I always felt relatively safe with Noah at my side. Although sometimes he was far from my side, exercising the over-abundant deer in the park. In our house in DC there was a dog door in the basement. I would regularly hear Noah bound down three flights of stairs, bump open his door, and then lay on the top of the slope in the back yard to sun himself. He loves the sun. Any source of heat really, but the sun in particular. He looked like the king of his domain out there…so happy and content.

Looking handsome in our garden in Washington, DC.

While he was highly trainable in many ways, I never succeeded in training Noah to walk nicely on lead, and it wasn’t for lack of trying. He pulled like a maniac, except on a show lead. I just tended to prefer places where we could enjoy off-leash walks and less yanking. He also has loved to roll in dead things all his life. Couldn’t be happier…the stinkier the better. Two memorable rolls come to mind: the remains of a dead seal at Ocean Shores while visiting my parents, and the remains of a dead racoon in a field near my friend’s house. You can’t imagine how horrific. At times it seemed the only solution would be to just burn the dog. But we bathed and scrubbed and always forgave him in the end. Noah couldn’t have cared less.

Not a very nice habit for such a gentleman. You see, back in California, the owner of Noah’s sire had convinced us to enter him into a show when he was six months old. He won best of opposite sex to best in sweepstakes (this means something to some people), and then went on to earn his championship on the East Coast after we moved to Washington.

Looking awkward and uncomfortable as his owners, not knowing what to do in a dog show photo. But very proud. This handler’s name was Nancy Brown. She took on quite a project when she agreed to handle Noah for his first show, but she did a great job!

What a stunning guy, no? This is a shot of Noah from a later show, handled by Pat Malan, a Giant Schnauzer breeder and show handler.

You wouldn’t know it from those photos, but he was very unruly. Very. When I took him to puppy school he was the one in the room that made all the other puppies look like nice, trainable dogs. I just knew everyone was thinking, “Well at least my puppy isn’t as bad as THAT puppy!” He was completely disruptive. Young Vizslas have an unbelievable amount of energy. But he did learn his lessons pretty well.

I titled this shot “I’m Too Sexy.” This is in our sun room in Washington DC. Noah and I loved that light-filled room with windows on three sides.

We also did a little field training. Just outside the DC metro area there are some amazing places for upland game.

Noah sired two litters while we lived on the East Coast, as we dabbled in and were tolerated by the true enthusiasts of showing, training and breeding dogs. It was a pleasure to see his beautiful puppies go on to light up each of their new families. Here’s a shot of Noah with some of his kids on our last group walk before moving to Sandpoint, Idaho:

All the ones with lolling tongues (1st, 3rd and 5th from the left) are Noah’s kids. Hilarious that he passed that trait on to them! Noah is on the far right.

Our move to Sandpoint in 2005 was a bit of a homecoming for Noah; he was born in Kingston Idaho. We visited the family we bought him from not long after we arrived. Noah and I set about finding our new hiking trails, and making friends through fellow dog owners. In fact, we have met some of our very best friends through Noah, both in DC and here in Sandpoint. Although the local parks in our new small town were ‘unenlightened’ when we arrived (lots of NO DOGS ALLOWED signs), we were able to find wonderful trails, a dog beach, and plenty of fun to be had in the wild west. And our lake is such a great place to swim in the summer! Noah took to flinging himself off the end of docks, or the bows of boats; the bigger the splash, the better.

His ‘game for anything’ attitude has always been a source of joy for us. Noah was like a marine for most of his life. You’d say his name and in a split second he was at your service, sitting in front of you with a look that said, “Yes sir? Reporting for duty sir!” He wanted to go anywhere with us, and was fearless about new experiences. The elevator, the airport, the boat, yes sir! He would get in a car with anyone, ready for the next adventure.

Caught airborne while running on a trail in Sandpoint. A way I will always remember him!

Noah’s hearing and alertness also were a pain at times. He developed a bad habit of ferociously responding to the mailman who pushed mail through the slot in our front door in Washington, DC. He would hear him coming and start barking, and when the mail emerged through the slot, he would grab the bundle and fling it into the house. Sometimes our mail ended up scattered down the hall. Never chewed, just violently tossed. Many accumulated hours of watching the mailman retreat from the house after the delivery seemed to teach Noah two things: 1) That he was winning the battle against an intruder, and 2) That mail carriers could be identified by a specific uniform. To this day, on walks around the neighborhood, a mail carrier in uniform gives him pause. He doesn’t do anything but stop and notice, but I’m sure he’s thinking, ‘I’ve got to keep an eye on that one.’

But he was also a source of protection and comfort to me, especially when Charles had to travel. And there were years where he traveled a lot. I never felt scared sleeping alone in the house with my faithful dog present.

One of those times, after we’d moved to a ground-floor apartment in Sandpoint, there was an attempted break-in in the middle of the night while Charles was away in Asia. I was awakened by Noah’s ferocious barking, and I saw the shadow of a person pass by the window. Despite the sound of a scary dog inside, the guy returned a few minutes later, methodically going to each window and door. Noah followed his every move, barking like a maniac. I called 911 and the craziest thing happened; the dispatcher said this to me: “I’m sorry but I don’t have any officers available right now.” I remember how my heart sank in that moment. I was watching someone on the other side of the blinds try to pry open a window. The dog was furious and ready to do battle. After a couple of minutes, a squad car came speeding across the parking lot, slammed on the breaks, and the cop jumped out and tackled the guy who was on top of a garbage can prying at the window. Turns out the 911 dispatcher did report the call, she just failed to tell me that. After they arrested the guy, the cop came to the door to talk to me. Noah, who had been completely amped up for twenty minutes, recognized him as a good guy, and turned into the welcoming committee, bringing the cop a toy and going into a full body wag. “That’s a great watch dog you’ve got there,” the cop told me. I know, I thought, he’s the very, very best.

Noah running in the K9 keg pull during Sandpoint’s winter carnival in 2010. His bait? Me! Charles would hold him back while I started running away from him just before the starter said ‘Go.’ He will follow his Mommy anywhere! I think he won 2nd place for his class that year, and we took home several great prizes.

There’s a common thread through the majority of Noah’s life: ours was a family without children. We wanted children, prayed for babies, read a million books and ran what felt like a million tests. We had unexplained infertility, and struggled with that for nine years. Noah was the willing recipient of our parental love and affection; the only child. It was important to have a place to channel some of that maternal energy. My way was to take the best care of my dog I knew how. For my husband, Noah has been his first dog ever. Despite wanting pets as a child, it was never allowed because of allergies in his family. He has loved Noah ferociously.

All of our lives changed dramatically a year and a half ago, when we adopted three children from Ethiopia.

Noah was already in his golden years when we exploded the family structure with three loud, energetic foreigners who were not just here for a visit. The baby bugged him, stepped on him, invaded his bed, played in his water bowl. He was not thrilled at first, but he took it all in stride. The boys had screaming rage fits every day or so in the first three months of homecoming. Noah dropped several notches in priority in terms of my time or ability to meet or exceed his needs. Despite all this, within six months he had come to not only accept, but love his expanded pack. He handled the change with impressive grace, and he played a critical role in welcoming these frightened, mistrusting children that I had never considered: Noah was a non-threatening model for love and affection.

Alex, our oldest, quickly became a big fan of Noah. He brought him to show and tell in 1st grade, and began walking him all by himself in recent months.

2011. Welcoming a snuggle from a boy who really needed some uncomplicated love.

Noah has brought so many gifts to our family. He’s been a pain, a joy, and everything in between. He has made me burst with pride, shrink in embarrassment, burn with anger, and roll with laughter. He has shown me that particular joie de vivre that only a dog knows how to live out, and that a Vizsla knows especially well. Noah represents an era in my marriage, the Before Kids era, which is proving to be so different from the After Kids era. Having him here now has been a strong thread to that past that I’ve so cherished. But the time is coming to say goodbye. Oh the agony of falling in love with a faithful dog and knowing that their lives are typically little more than a decade; a block of time, a portion of our own history. That someday, with a breaking heart, we will have to say goodbye.

To my beautiful, sensitive, rambunctious boy: When I can see in your eyes that you are suffering too much, that you are ready, we will do the impossible and let you go. For today, I’m so grateful for the extra hours of your loving and faithful presence in our family.